Archive for the ‘Dilbert’ Category

Here’s how I know I’m a member of Generation X and not the Millennial Generation: the prospect of working from home does not appeal to me in the slightest. People who are only a few years younger than me seem to enjoy mixing their personal and professional lives. Not me. I regard such arrangements as something of a scam. They start innocently enough, with an employee checking Facebook or paying his electric bill at work, but then they mutate. Pretty soon, the poor twenty-something is answering e-mails at the dinner table and preparing presentations while sitting (slightly less comfortably) on the living room couch. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m perfectly happy compartmentalizing my tasks. If I have some pressing personal matter to attend to, I’ll take care of it on my lunch hour. If there’s an extraordinary amount of work to be done, I’ll stay late at the office.

Whenever someone uses the words “cease” and “desist” in the same sentence, I get a little nervous. Whenever they add the words “cartoonist,” “intellectual,” and “property,” I get downright anxious. And whenever they throw in references to “WordPress,” I start to worry about the future of my own online hobby, The Daily Funnies. Will a cartoonist demand that my blog be taken down, as was the case with the Funky Winkerbean send-up Son of Stuck Funky? Or will the fact that I post a different comic every day protect me from this fate, as it apparently has with The Comics Curmudgeon?

I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t speak to the intricacies of copyright law. All I can speak to are my intentions. Hopefully the following will convince cartoonists and syndicates that I’m acting in good faith:

The purpose of this blog is to highlight comic strips that I enjoy, and to serve as an archive of comic strips from years past. My hope is that a reader encountering 2011 strips in, say, 2031, will experience the same thrill I do when glancing at the comics page of a decades-old newspaper.

The purpose of this blog is not to rob cartoonists of newspaper clients, book purchases, or page views. On the contrary, it is to inspire an appreciation of the depth and quality of the contemporary comics scene. Hopefully that will result in more money for cartoonists, not less.

I have no commercial interest in this blog. I do not sell advertising or link to merchandise, nor do I intend to. If I ever get around to writing a novel, I may post a link so interested readers can purchase it, but that would require me getting off my lazy butt, so don’t hold your breath.

I respect the rights of cartoonists to retain control over their creations. If any cartoonist does not want their comic strip to be featured on this blog, I will be more than happy to remove it. Simply send an e-mail to dailyfunniesblog@gmail.com and ask that your comic be removed.

If, on the other hand, a cartoonist wants me to include their comic as part of my daily reading material, they should feel free to hit me up at the same e-mail address, dailyfunniesblog@gmail.com.

Finally, please don’t sue me. I come to this project as a hobbyist who loves comics and hopes to inspire a deeper appreciation of them. I don’t consider this blog to be a violation of copyright law, and can only hope that others agree with my assessment.

There you have it. Thankfully, no cartoonists or syndicates (or lawyers representing cartoonists or syndicates) have told me to stop reproducing comic strips. Hopefully, they won’t start now.

My iPhone is a pretty neat gadget, but it has its limitations. On the plus side, it’s great for listening to music, browsing basic websites, checking e-mail, and checking Facebook. On the negative side, it’s terrible for watching movies, browsing Flash-heavy websites, responding to e-mail, and composing status updates. These last two tasks are particularly difficult thanks to an auto-correct feature that formats the word “iPhone” correctly while changing almost everything else to “ksdjksjdg.” Fortunately, iPhone users can disable this feature by going to Settings / General / Keyboard / Auto-Correction, and switching from “on” to “off.”

Today’s Dilbert is outdated…right? I mean, tablets and e-readers matter as much as phones, don’t they? At least that’s what Apple, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble would have us believe. And while I tend to recoil at the kind of holiday groupthink that brands something as a “hot item,” I am encouraged by the fact that considerable commercial mojo is being conjured in the name of reading. Of course, any e-reader worth its salt also comes with a web browser that allows people to read news sites, and check up on blogs, and…log on to social networks, and…play games. Dammit.

This is an interesting concept – that beautiful people only respond to other beautiful people – but what really holds my interest is the way the beautiful people are drawn. The woman in this strip has what appears to be two right shoulders and two right arms, an impression that’s reinforced by the fact that she’s turning her head to the left. I suppose those shoulder-like bumps are meant to be her breasts, but they’re so high they’re practically at her neck. As for the man, he looks like he’s wearing a body cast underneath his suit. Did he injure himself doing something manly? Are these really the two most attractive people that Dilbert could come up with?

I’m no fan of the phrase “white trash,” even when it’s used as a term of endearment. Referring to someone as “trash” just seems mean-spirited to me. Similar phrases, like “hillbilly” and “redneck,” strike me as benign, but “white trash” makes me wince every time I hear it. Fortunately, today’s Dilbert provides a respite. Having an office worker refer to the “white trash community” is not only hilarious; it also makes the phrase sound as ridiculous and juvenile as it ought to.

I love my mom. That said, sometimes she needs help with the simplest of tasks. Take the Internet, for example. My mom has lived in her house for months, but she’s still making due without service. It’s not that she hasn’t signed up for service or that she hasn’t been paying her bills, but rather that her provider has refused to check her faulty phone jacks. The easy solution would to be to call and complain and, if that doesn’t work, cancel the service and sign up with a new provider. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, the problem has persisted for months and shows no sign of abetting. The curious thing is that the rest of my mom’s house looks great. She’s bought and assembled furniture, found contractors for repairs, and unpacked most of her things. Maybe the Internet just isn’t that important to her.